How to Develop Strategic Alliance Relationships for Automatic, Ongoing Referrals!

Finding new customers is tough, you spend so many hours networking to get a few new clients now and again, you spend hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars on online marketing or other advertising only to be frustrated with the results, and sometimes it all makes you wonder why you ever started your business, or at least wonder is there a better way … and the great news is that there is a better way!

We all love referrals right?

When someone refers a new client to your business, they are typically the easiest to sell to because, not only do they not have the normal fears a non referred prospect has, but they are more likely to pay full price without negotiating.

We all have two fears when we go to buy something:

Price Fear (Can we get this cheaper somewhere else)

Performance fear (Will this product or service do what the sales person told me it will do)

But when people are referred by people they trust and respect, those fears do not exist, they know their friend wouldn’t have referred them to you if you weren’t right for them … so it makes it ok for them to buy. Therefore it just makes sense to develop a strong referral system for your clients to be on the look out for new people to refer to you.

The thing about clients referring new clients to you, great and all as that is … it’s a “onsey- twosey” deal. They normally have a small circle of influence. Believe me, I’m not knocking it, but what if you could amplify that same situation by developing relationship with other companies who could refer you, not one or two clients … but tens, or hundreds, or even thousands of new clients?

What if you could develop a relationship with other businesses that have the same target market as you, and have a system that every time they get a new client, you get an introduction to a new prospect … yes, I said every time!

Is that even possible? I hear you ask! Yes and when it works, it can completely chance how you do business.

Big businesses do it all the time, when you buy a new computer from a big box store, what is on the screen when you turn it on? “30 Day Free Trail of Norton Antivirus” , 60 Day Free Trial of Microsoft Office”, “30 Day Free trial of … Pick your software!” Do you see what just happened? You bought a computer and all of these software companies got an automatic introduction to you. Does everyone click to use the free trial, of course not, but some do! Then some of those go ahead and purchase the software when the trial is over… automatic ongoing referrals from the hardware company to the software company.

A relationship, built once, that keeps on giving is a beautiful thing! So my question for you is …

What’s your 30 day free trial and who can you get to give it away with their product or service?

Once you answer that question, you will change how you do business for ever.

Here’s a few tips to get you started:

Make a list of industries that your current clients are doing business with now

Think through which of those industries would be most likely to refer to your type of business

Research and develop a list of 20 or 30 or more local (or national) companies that are in that industry

Develop something of great value that you can give to them to give to their clients

Set up a meeting to open the conversation(Be picky!)

Schedule another meeting to discuss your idea and see if they are open to it

If they are open to it, set up a time to train their team on what you do so everyone knows about the new relationship

Pick a launch date and have supporting marketing materials ready

Kick off your new strategic alliance campaign

Monitor your results monthly

This strategy works great in every industry and for every size of business. It takes work and time to find the right referral partner; you do have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince! But once it’s in place the referrals keep coming!